Penultimate Passage

I won't beat around the bush, because I'm sure you all want to know: Yes, we have passed our plumbing inspection! Weeks after the plumbing was "done," and at least a double-digit number of days since it was actually completed, we finally got us a sticker. Despite having an inspection scheduled for last week (supposedly), it took until yesterday to do it, since we had to secure an inspection on the fireplace beforehand. Wish we had known that sooner, because last week, while thinking "hell, we might as well get some stuff done on our own," we called our trusted fireplace people and had them cap our flue and do some pointing. So of course, as soon as I pay them, I hear we need to find a chimney guy. "Nope, we're calling my guys and that's it." Within 48 hours, we had our certificate. (Granted, the inspector had a whale of a time trying to discern what the paper actually said, because of poor penmanship, but hey, maybe the guy was Dr. Chimney, thank you very much.)

But it's not just a piece of paper that we've scored since I last wrote. Our two straggler windows were finally delivered from the custom shop in Baltimore and installed; the one in the balcony doesn't make that big of an impact, but the one in the dining room is amazing, because it was the one window we never actually saw light through-- it had been boarded up since the first time we saw the house 28 months ago. Now? I sit at my dining-room table and am actually a bit distracted by seeing the top of the windmill on the right side of my peripheral vision. It's a distraction about which I will never complain.

Speaking of the dining room, we finally got our chairs. Or rather, we finally ordered our chairs, and they were delivered crazy-fast. We had been holding off until most of the construction was finished, and once we reached the point where we needed to self-propel, they were an obvious choice. We got six, and plan to get two more, either matching or complementary. They're uber-modern, metal chairs-- three with white coating and three copper. They look really great with the striated table from my grandma. They arrived in pieces, and we had to put them together; IKEA definitely didn't write these directions! After wrestling with the first chair, I got an expletive-laden voice-mail message from Abby about the experience, but by the time numbers five and six were constructed while I watched House Hunters Sunday night, they took about five minutes apiece. For metal chairs, they're really comfortable, although I did have a bit of an accident while constructing #4, and have a gash on my right wrist to prove it.

Also completed recently is the switch of our hot and cold controls on the kitchen sink, as well as the installation of the dishwasher. No more washing dishes in the bathroom, and the machine is really, really quiet, which is great. So quiet, actually, that it's already been opened twice mistakenly during the rinse cycle. Gonna have to learn how to lock it! Although it is working, it's not anchored to the cabinets, so when you empty the contents it lurches forward just enough to make you think that this is the time it'll fall completely out, just like my recurring dreams as a kid of that strong wind knocking my house over to the extent that the mailbox post across the street would come through my window. Yeah, not gonna happen, but not taking any chances. The fridge also leans too far forward, and the freezer opens every time you close the fridge door. But it's wedged so tightly in the cabinets that I can't pull it out to adjust the tilt. Gonna have to wait for the cabinet guys to finish up to see if they can do it for us.

Ahh, the cabinets. Still unfinished, but supposedly the last door is going to be delivered to Home Depot tomorrow. Once it's in, they'll come out, switch out that glass door for the solid wood one they mistakenly installed in April, and do a couple other tweaks--like anchoring the dishwasher. Also hoping they'll install all of our handles and drawer pulls, despite us having purchased them online rather than from Home Depot. Abby's not so sure they will, but I have faith.

We've done a lot of buying lately, but the fun kind of buying: home furnishings, rather than home improvement.  There were the aforementioned dining-room chairs, which are BluDot Real Good Chairs from Fab.com.  Then there's the computer desk we got on clearance from West Elm.  And the painting we bought from an alternative art shop in Old Town Winchester during our anniversary weekend-- I haggled them from $150 to $100, so I feel productive on that one.  There's the mailbox we found on eBay and bought, only to have the letter carrier say we should really have one on the curb instead of the house, so we just put it on the porch for the time being, but today we found it to have been installed by our contractor on the wall.

On the flip side, there's the storage-room door we swear we bought but is nowhere to be found, so we had to reorder it from Home Depot and it's due in later this week.   And of course the bathroom hardware for the upstairs bathroom that we found online and had shipped to us, only for Abby to decide she doesn't like it; it's already on its way back.  Oh, and the still-nonexistent upstairs-shower door that we had measured last month, received the quote for yesterday, and think we can do better on.  So obviously, WE still have some work to do; the ball's not entirely in the contractor's court.

But for now, our next big date is Thursday; that's when we have our big, final inspection.  Pass that, and we get our Certificate of Occupancy.  In other words, we won't be squatters here anymore.  We refinanced a few weeks back-- had our mortgage payment cut by more than a thousand bucks a month, which is like getting a KILLER raise-- and I had been worried that we'd need the Certificate of Occupancy in order to finalize the closing.  I don't know why, other than my mortgage company told me I would.  But here I am, with a new mortgage and my old one so officially closed that my website login has been disabled.  So all the inspection will mean to us is that Maryland blesses the work that's been done.  But we also have to pretend we're not living here for that to happen.  And by pretend, I mean pack up a bunch of our stuff and seriously pretend we're not living here.  Seriously.  So tomorrow, on what would normally be a fun half-day at work picking up the kids from their half-day, it'll be more about making sure the kids are happy and occupied while Abby and I repack the most important things we have here, into the boxes that have been sitting in the living room for a month awaiting this day.  Our clothes will go back into bags, our food... um... maybe into the community room fridge for a few hours?  (Luckily, I haven't been grocery shopping in a week and we're running low on basically everything.)  But hopefully, come Thursday night, we can forget about permits forever, and start focusing on the end goal: living here, with no more work to be done by the contractors, and beginning our quest for landscaping and that big Maryland Historical Trust payoff.  

In the meantime, though, off to repack our house.  

On the Line

A few of things were supposed to happen on Tuesday, and an hour into my phone call with DirecTV Tech Support, it appeared that not only would we fail on all counts, but we may have to begin the search for Internet providers -- if not television as well -- all over again.

The issue with DirecTV was not that the satellite wasn't working. On the contrary, we had watched TV for a couple of nights in a row, and except for the temporary appearance of rainbow-colored vertical bars on the screen on Monday, everything was good. Everything, that is, except our On Demand feature. Granted, this isn't a huge deal, but what it meant was that the satellite was not hooking up to the Internet, where all the On Demand content is stored. It would mean that we'd have access to current programming, but not to anything in the past, unless we DVR'd it. We'd also have no access to the "10,000 movies and TV shows" they say we have, which is a major part of the subscription cost, I would guess. 

As the hour-long call progressed, I became more and more nervous about having to scrap our Clear Internet and go webless for a while longer, until the cable companies got their act together and ran a wire under our street. That's because this weekend, two different DirecTV reps told me the two systems were incompatible. Of course, I didn't believe them-- not because I'm some electronics expert (ha!) but rather because a) Clear assured me I could get between 3-6 mbps for downloads, and DirecTV only required 2 mbps; and b) the Clear sales department directed me to DirecTV-- I used the same phone call to order both!-- so how the heck could they be incompatible?  But now, faced with a 15-day Clear trial period already half over, and a 2-year contract for DirecTV that has $20/month cancellation penalties, I was thinking I'd have to send back the system and not only have to deal with a cable company for Internet service, but at an exorbitant rate, due to us not actually getting cable from them. So as the 1:00:00 mark hit on my phone call, things were not looking good.

Earlier in the day, I had been on the receiving end of a sorry-'bout-that message, as Rory wrote to tell me the plumber couldn't come until Thursday. We have been waiting for him to come hook up the kitchen plumbing for a week now, since not only does it mean we can apply for a certificate of occupancy (and finally finalize our refinance), but also that we could put an end to microwaving water for tea, waiting for ice cubes, smelling a weird NYC-subway-like stench in the storage room caused by an incorrectly-sized waste pipe, and (most importantly) having to wash our dishes in the bathroom sink. Seriously, things like excess milk and chicken soup don't look very nice poured in your toilet-- trust me.

We're also waiting for the last piece of our dining-room chandelier: the lighting. Well, half of the lighting, to be exact. James, a local artist from our old neighborhood, created a larger version of an Anthropologie light fixture Abby really liked. It's installed now, after a process that freaked Abby out, since it involved him standing on the top rung of our step ladder, itself atop a six-foot scaffold on the dining-room side of the great room, with Abby holding things steady as James reached to place the electric box at the apex of the cathedral ceiling. But the install looks great; you don't notice the box at all, silver on the white ceiling, and hidden behind one of the rafters. (That's more than I can say for the smoke detector mid-room, which is still hooked onto the dark rafter like a big blob of marshmallow fluff on a Twix bar.) The unfinished part of the chandelier is that, as we plugged the bulbs in-- Edison bulbs, so as to make sure we pad the Pepco CEO's annual bonus more effectively-- we noticed only four of the eight sockets worked. James seemed unaffected, announcing he knew what the problem was, and that he'd fix it when he came back later in the week to adjust the height of the fixture. I'm still not a fawning fan of the thing, but I think it'll grow on me, and it's definitely a plus to have adequate lighting during dinner.

We did have some things completed this week. On Monday morning, we had our first trash pick-up, following the end of our annoying "please recognize us as an address, since we pay taxes and stuff" issue with the county. We have two different recycling bins, which means that we have to separate paper and cardboard from bottles and cans. And what's really weird is that we're responsible for providing our own trash bin, as opposed to the Supercans provided by DC to residents there. We also have to urge the mailman to start delivering mail to us, since everything's still being dropped off at the property manager's office even though we have our address on the wall now. Granted, we have no mailbox as of yet, but we have a doormat; just put it under that!  It's a pain because the office is only open during business hours, and as mail isn't exactly a priority for me dear wife, we can go a week without retrieving it. (Love ya, babe.) 

Pay no attention to the non-working bulb to Abby's right.

We also found out that our assessment of the plumbing situation wasn’t entirely correct—in both good and annoying ways.  The good way was that it turned out that our fridge actually had been hooked up, and the ice is now being made.  (C’mon, that’s the one bit of progress? I’ll trade you for a dishwasher!) When the plumber stopped by momentarily this week, he apparently was able to do that, as well as to affix the faucet to the countertop—albeit with no actual plumbing hookup underneath the counter.  He said that the subway smell was probably not going to happen anymore, since the washing machine was now working and there was enough water in the pipes to keep burps from the sewer down where they belong—although I don’t know whether I should buy that explanation.   But he also said they’re going to have to install a garbage disposal in our sink.  A disposal had kept showing up very early in the planning process, and we kept telling them that we didn’t want one.  But time and again, there it was on the planning documents.  Well, I guess one of the documents it was on was the plumbing permits, and without an install, we won’t pass the inspection.  So they had to install an accompanying switch on the backsplash to go with it.  My guess is that I’ll be charged for both of these things—whether on a line item or, more likely, buried in other costs—when I explicitly said on multiple occasions that we didn’t want a disposal.  I’m guessing it’ll be taken out after the inspection—again at my expense?—and I have no idea whether our access to the hot-water tap will suffer during that time, but I’m going to guess so.

Which leads me back to the beginning of the second hour on the phone with DirecTV.  Things aren’t looking good.  The lack of 50% of my chandelier, and the lack of progress on my plumbing was wearing on my mind, and I was looking for a way—any way!—to just end the call without pissing the guy off for having wasted an hour of his time.  Abby walks into the room, having spent the last hour (or so it seemed) in the shower, and plops down in front of the computer.  She announces that the Internet’s not working.  Wait, it was working at the beginning of my phone call.  I tell Mr. DirecTV, and we’re puzzled.  I say, “wait: would that switch we threw a half-hour back have changed that?”  Maybe.  I go over, throw the switch, and the web comes back online. And, an hour and three minutes into my call, all of a sudden a message shows up on the TV screen: “Congratulations?  Your DirecTV system has been connected to the Internet!”  Bells ring, angels sing, babies coo.  Happily, I take the piping hot receiver away from my ear, and sit down to watch our On Demand.  Hey—we ain’t got a kitchen sink, but we can watch Tosh.0, and that’s really all that matters, right?

An End to Fancy Camping?

When we first moved into our house in the District, Abby and I joked that we were "fancy camping," what with our one working electric outlet and our daily trek to the basement to use the shower, and our lack of central heating.  More than eight years later, we have found ourselves "fancy camping" once more.  Only this time, the hardships are the lack of television, Internet, and a kitchen sink.  Lo and behold: this week.

Up until Monday, I had been holding out hope that some cable company would come to our rescue.  You see, our neighbors all have cable.  That's because, well, they live in 2013.  Unfortunately, Dewitt Drive separates the historic from the pre-historic.  That's because while 9615 Dewitt Drive, across the street, has their choice of Comcast or Verizon, 9618 Dewitt Drive, us, is left in the dark ages.  No wires cross the street, aboveground or underground.  And although a conduit runs from approximately 250 feet up the street over to a location near our parking spots, it is empty.  Just like when we found out last year that our house was "eligible" to have public water supply access, but didn't actually have a connection, we found out this weekend that we are "close" to having cable companies accept our money in their exorbitant pricing schemes, but no proverbial cigar is anywhere to be found.  So on Monday night, after a fruitless meeting with Comcast, I officially gave up on cable.

Therefore, enlightenment.  Yesterday we got a FedEx package in the mail with our new Clear Internet equipment in it.  Clear is a provider that gives you Internet from cell towers, and doesn't require any wiring at all.  We unpacked the box, plugged in the receiver, scratched our heads for a moment while our computer told us we weren't installing something correctly, then noticed the web was already working in the background.  Yep, not even one button to press: Internet.  As a gift to ourselves, after we put the kids to bed, we officially sat down on the couch for the first time in the new house and watched an episode of our favorite British TV Game show, Q.I., off of YouTube.  And there was much rejoicing.  (For those of you who are interested, Clear is $50/month, and you can even take it with you when you travel.  You basically make yourself into a wi-fi hotspot for up to ten devices, which is great because we have a lot of things that want to hook themselves to the Internet, like our thermostat and likely the security system we haven't gotten yet.  Another thing that wants to hook to the Internet is...)

Television!  Today: Dish Network.  Nope, sorry, DirecTV.  (I always get them mixed up; it's the "D.")  After I called Clear on Monday night, I called DirecTV and scheduled an install.  They assured me that, despite our weird angles and the fact that the main NPS building overshadows the house, we'd be able to get perfectly good coverage.  Last week in Buffalo, when I realized satellite service may be in my future, I talked with my cousin Jenny about it, and she assured me that she had never lost coverage before-- and she lives n Buffalo, where there's this thing called "weather."  So we asked DirecTV to come out today, and of course Abby has a migraine.  But she was a trooper, because she knew it meant television was en route.  We had wanted the installer to put the dish on the side roof, above the first-floor bathroom, because it would be out of the way, but it needs to face in a southwesterly direction, and the house would block it there.  So the main roof was the only option, but as with everything here, there are considerations.  So I called the property management company and asked them what their satellite dish policy was.  Kwame, the property manager, told me there's actually an FCC regulation prohibiting prohibitions on satellite dishes, but that we should put it in the least conspicuous place possible, and not on community property.  Bonnie, from Save Our Seminary, said she didn't know of anyone else who had a dish on the property, but she also didn't know of anyone whose request for one had been denied; she also quoted the FCC regulation.  So we are now the proud owner of a satellite dish, located at the far eastern corner of the roof, where it can't be seen at all from the front of the house, and where it's partially obscured by the 100-year-old yews in the yard.  And I've already set the DVR to record Parks & Recreation.  Again, about $50/month, so $100 for cable and Internet, which would have been $139 with Comcast... whenever they decided to lay the lines.

Our new faucet.  All that's missing is water.

The entertainment hole has been filled now, but there are a few other holes that have been missing.  Namely, when our counters were set a few weeks ago, some holes were left undrilled.  The countertop guys came out for the install and asked Abby for the faucet we'd be using in the kitchen, so she handed them the box.  Only more than a week later, when we took the faucet out of the box, did we realize that, um, the faucet had never been taken out of the box.  Only one hole had been drilled, and it was a three-hole faucet.  I called the countertop people and got a definite attitude from the manager.  So I made Abby call back, because no one dislikes Abby.  And what do you know: we now have the proper number of holes drilled for our faucet, and should have a completely functioning suite of water-using fixtures in our kitchen by early next week.  And not a moment too soon, either, because washing dishes in a bathroom sink is truly disgusting.  I don't know why that is, actually, because it's not even like we're using the upstairs bathroom much, since the door to it only went in this week, and the shower's still doorless.  It's just that when you're cleaning out a pot that has cheese and tomato sauce stuck inside of it, and it's all going down the drain in your brand-new ultra-modern sink, it doesn't sit right.  One thing I'm sure of: we'll make very, very good use of the dishwasher once it's hooked in.

The dishwasher, pre-spacers

The dishwasher, by the way, does not need to be replaced.  Phew!  We had thought there was an issue because of the large gaps separating the dishwasher from both the cabinets on either side of it and the counter on top.  But when the guys came back to finish cabinet installation, fillers magically appeared on the sides.  Granted, the cabinet installation is still not completed, not the least of which is because the gap between the dishwasher and the countertop remains, but at least we know we don't have to buy a new one.  As for the cabinets, they're now all in.  The problems are very minor now: one door is solid, but was ordered to be glass; the drawer pulls were not attached; and the space above the dishwasher needs to be filled.  The fridge needs to be leveled, which is less the fault of the cabinet installers and more the fault of us having put the kitchen on a slanted surface (that used to be a porch).  Also, having bought "supercabinets" for the corners, convinced the inserts would allow us to use more of the space in the corner cabinets to each side of the range, we realized very quickly that the supercabinet inserts actually preclude us from using the back third of each cabinet.  We're going to try to return the inserts, but at the very least we'll be removing them from the cabinets and just using basic shelving.  We'll totally deal with having to bend down and stretch to get the less frequently-used stuff hiding in the back if it means we're not wasting so much space in the first place.  Oh, and our contractors have to raise the range hood, because they apparently think we're about three feet tall.

Our kitchen as it stands today.
The cabinet to the right of the range hood should have a glass door,
and the range hood will be raised significantly.

As for space, we are bouncing back and forth between thinking we have way too much or not enough.  I think it's because as we put stuff away, we see the empty boxes and think, "wow, there's not much left to unpack!"  Then we go to another room and realize, "wait, there are kitchen boxes stored in the library.  Crap."  And more boxes shift to the rapidly filling cabinets.  I think in the end, we'll be just about right, with maybe a bit of extra room, but not too much.

My doorbell!
It goes "Brrrrrrring!

As for other new stuff, we've now got all the doors installed.  Except the one for the storage area, which we swear we ordered but is not here.  So we'll have to buy another one.  But there are no doors sitting around anymore, waiting to be installed.  About half the trim is in, but none of it is painted.  That is going to be a huge, immensely boring undertaking that I'm totally going to pawn off on Abby if I can help it!  The misplaced door hardware has been corrected, and I realized the deadbolt on the back door was not done incorrectly-- it just works that way.  It's a keypad doorlock, which is awesome because it means we don't have to give anyone a key if they want to come over when we're not here-- we just give them the code and they walk right in.  I love it, because it's fantastic when you have your arms filled with groceries.  And speaking of awesome: my doorbell has been installed!  No one has rung it yet, though, because even though our house numbers have also gone up out front, still nobody can find our house.  I constantly have delivery people wondering where we are.  "I'm on a traffic circle, and all I see is a big building and a green house."  Duh, look at the numbers on the wall, blind guy!

Our main goal now is unpacking.  Because once we unpack, I really feel we can do landscaping, which I desperately want to do.  Oh, and because it will then feel less like "fancy camping" and more like "living in a house you've owned for 23 months already."  Abby and I had a bitch session while washing dishes in the bathroom last night, and went over all the reasons we were unhappy with the house.  My unhappiness has already been expounded on in this forum, but is generally concerned with my not wanting to have had a "fancy camping" experience in this place.  Hers, though, can be compared to watching that show on HGTV where they show people what their house would look like if it were rehabbed with an unlimited budget, but then they just go out and buy stuff from flea markets instead; yeah, it's way better than your old place, but you had so much more in your head.  Once we're settled, I'm sure it'll keep getting closer to that picture in our heads.  But for now, I'm looking forward to using the Internet, watching the television, and washing dishes in the kitchen.  In other words, the end of "fancy camping" for good.

The new up-lighting in our Great Room.  Decidedly NOT fancy camping.

Hiatus? Not Likely

Tomorrow we head out on our Spring Break trip to Florida, four basement dwellers in search of some sun and sand before the final push.  And in the waning days before the trip, we had another small flurry of activity from our side, with only a smidge of movement on the other.  But I have faith that in the ten days we're out of state, our contractors won't be on vacation.  What I don't have faith in, however, is that we'll be devoid of all things house during our trip.

Last year, I distinctly recall tracking down the water company people while standing watching the ocean.  This time?  I may be dealing with plumbing fixture problems while standing on that same deck, only it'll be the very end of the process rather than the beginning.  Last year it was finding out we had absolutely no connection to municipal water whatsoever, and this year?  Who knows?  Although we have some inkling...

First off, Abby found out yesterday that the bathroom door in the basement doesn't clear the toilet, which is against code.  Never mind the fact that we wanted the toilet to have been placed in a location where, gasp, that wouldn't have been an issue.  Now it's an issue.  Contractor says they may have to move the door, although I think they should just move the whole wall a few inches into the mudroom.  Problem with that?  The walls were put up before the tile was laid, so there's no tile where the wall currently stands.  We do have extra tile, though, so that's a possible fix.  Time will tell how that problem is solved: ten days of time, that is.

Our downstairs shower door.  How very Euro...
(And for $3000 less than custom.)

We had a guy come out to measure the openings for our shower doors, and he came back with a completely, utterly ridiculous quote of $6,400 for the two doors together, including $3,400 for a custom door for downstairs that took into account the height disparity between the two sides of the shower wall.  I promptly wrote back to Mark: "tell the guy thanks but no thanks."  I went on Build.com and in about ten minutes found a perfectly good (fancy, actually) all-glass door with no edge, just like Abby requires.  It's a splash door, which is how Europeans do their showers a lot of the time.  That means it only covers about 75% of the opening-- where the water splashes.  Halfway across, there's a pivot joint in the glass that turns the window into a door when you want it open.  Simple, pretty, modern, and less than $500.  Rather than $3,400.  Upstairs is gonna be a little harder, because we haven't found anything online that has no edge, as Abby requires.  Or rather, all the un-edged doors are sliding doors, and Abby wants doors that swing out.  She went by Home Depot today to talk to someone, but no one was there.  She says she'll call them tomorrow... from the airport... we'll see...  But in the meantime, the downstairs shower door has already been ordered, so at least that's a job 50% done.

This is what $450 in door knobs looks like.

Also ordered is one of the two door knobs we're missing.  Still haven't picked front-door hardware, but it was simple enough to go onto Build.com and find the pocket door version of the knobs we got for the rest of the house.  Less than ten bucks, matches everything, done.  Hopefully by the time we get back, all of the doors will have been delivered, installed, and attached to hardware. We may not have a shower door upstairs, but at least we'd have a bathroom door!  I sat down on Wednesday in the Great Room and labeled the 20-some knobs we've already had delivered, since there are five different kinds (dummies, lockable ones, ones without locks, keyed entry, and a deadbolt), and Lola sat down with me to look at the boxes.  She was intrigued that her name was on three different boxes (two closet dummies and a lockable knob) and was downright thrilled with the idea that she'll have a lock on her door, "so I can lock Isaac out!"  Exactly what I was thinking...

Abby's Home Depot trip also had her finalizing our blinds order.  Yeah, blinds may be thought of more as decor, but think of a) how open our bedrooms are to people walking or driving by the south side of the house, and b) how old our stormless windows are.  (Actually, I was holding my hands near the windows the other day and found them to have not nearly as much of a temperature gradient as I had feared.  Bonus!)  Anyhow, the blinds we ordered are the cellular kind, that look like accordions and help not only with privacy (while allowing for light to come through) but also with efficiency, because they have an R-value of something-small-but-I'll-take-it.  What's also cool about them is that they'll be attached at the bottom, so they can be pulled up rather than down; that'll help because the top parts of the windows can be kept open while still getting privacy in the room.  Additionally, since they're custom, that means each one will fit the window perfectly, and will be installed professionally.  And hopefully that'll be done in about two weeks, just as we're moving in.

The couches on which Abby napped.

After Home Depot, Abby took a nap.  Sure, that sounds like not-so-big news, but it's the first time any of us has slept in the house, so there's that.  She napped on one of the sofas downstairs, which we arranged on Wednesday after having given Abby ample time to put a lot of our stuff away where it needed to go.  It still amazes me that the giant pile of stuff that came out of that storage pod has pretty much disappeared into all of the closet space downstairs.  (Although upstairs, that's a different matter... How is it that we have so many clothes?!)  

Our paperwork stuff is coming along as well; the mortgage refi hasn't moved, but our insurance rates are coming down, which is always a plus.  While we're gone, I expect to spend some time on the cell phone working both of these issues... just as I had on the beach in Delaware last year.  Hey, it'll be worth it!

In the storage area under one set of stairs.
There's TONS of room down there!

Anyhow, that's about it as my vacation begins.  I won't see the house for the next ten days, and hopefully once I do, it'll be completely and utterly livable-- although I still haven't heard anything about those damn windows that need to be replaced.  I'd say "fingers crossed," but I have said that way too much while writing this blog, and plus, doing that would give me weird tan lines on my hands, wouldn't it? ;)

Guest room closet, with door!

Moved, Just Not Moved In

The ZippyShell storage unit
that caused more than a few of our neighbors
to walk their dogs by our place this weekend :)

So it's official: Almost all of our stuff is now in the house.  We are currently still living in the basement, but our confines have suddenly become much more spacious.  Basically, we've got two mattresses, the cushions from our couches, our electronics, clothes for a week, toiletries, and foodstuffs here.  Everything else?  In Maryland.  I know, right?!

This weekend was really productive, thanks to my father-in-law and brother-in-law schlepping themselves up here for the weekend with their pick-up truck.  Between that tiny Tacoma and our Prius, we managed to get everything up, and didn't even have to cancel on two different birthday parties the kids had been invited to.  In fact, the parties really helped things, because they took the kids out of our hair for hours at a time on both Saturday and Sunday.  By the end of Saturday, we had put a huge dent in the basement, and by the end of Sunday there was so much stuff in the family room of the bungalow that we were having trouble moving around.  We basically put everything on the floor it needed to go on, and left it at that.  Once Monday rolled around, Abby spent the day dividing things up.  For instance, she put all the seasonal stuff (like Christmas ornaments and Easter baskets) in one of the storage spaces under the stairs, and all of the home improvement stuff (like paint cans and extra shingles) in the other.  She says that after having done that, it's clear we're not going to have a storage issue after all, which I still suspect we will.  

When looking at this photograph,
please imagine a high-pitched scream
going off at random intervals.

Getting the stuff out of the storage container was fun for us, because it meant progress on the house.  But for the kids, that was the most important thing we could have done-- screw moving, they wanted their toys back!  The squeal let out by Lola when she saw the giant garbage bag full of stuffed animals way back behind most of the stuff in there was likely audible across the Beltway. She insisted on carrying the bag out herself, even though it was bigger than she is.  And forget anything about not unpacking because of dust; by the time we left to come back to DC Saturday night, those toys were strewn around her room like nobody's business.  Surprisingly, she chose not to bring her Abby Cadabby (a Sesame Street fairy character, for those of you without small kids) back to DC with her, favoring a couple of small cat toys.  Guess quantity ruled over quality in that decision.  Meanwhile, Isaac was absorbed with his synthesizer (which I fully expect him to forget within a week, since that's what he did after we got it for him) and his BeyBlade spinny things-- they're tops, but with enough styling on them that saying they're tops just makes you a party pooper.  Whatever-- the kids were left to their own devices once the toys popped out of the storage container, which helped us get everything else out without  breaking anything!  (And yes, Abby's grandpa's enormous armoire got in, in one piece, without breaking anything else.)

We even managed to do an IKEA run midday on Sunday, although after all was said and done, I think it wasn't the best use of our time.  It ended up being no sweat to find the stuff Abby wanted, but we spent at least a half an hour in line, and since everything we got ended up being in long, flat boxes, I think we could have easily fit it all in the Prius with the seats folded down.  No matter: I am likely to have more than a few days of putting Scandinavian furniture together in my future, and I'm okay with that.  (We got each of the kids a new desk and a new bookcase, got flush-mount light fixtures for all the closets, and the same hanging fixture we've had in our DC kitchen for 9 years for our mudroom; hey, you stick with what you like!)

On Saturday, Abby met with the countertop measurer guy, and by the end of the weekend we got the plans for the project.  They told us it'll all be done within ten days, which means it should be installed before we get back from Florida.  That magic return trip will probably be when we physically move into the house ourselves, which should give the contractor and all the subs plenty of time (famous last words!) to finish what they've got left.  We had four doors delivered today, and the plumber "had free range" (Mark's words, not mine) of his stuff today, so a lot of that final stuff is being, well, finalized, even before we leave for the beach.

Can you tell there's a wood block mounted behind
this sconce?  I can't...

And the upstairs bathroom is also lighted now.

Other stuff has been done as well.  I bought this snazzy and probably overpriced thermostat called "Nest" that supposedly learns your habits and adjusts the temperature accordingly all by itself.  We had the bathroom sconces installed and the downstairs ones had to have wood blocks placed behind them because they didn't clear the mirror (that same damn mirror!) without them; amazed to see the guys actually painted the wood the same gray color as the walls to make it blend in.  Honestly, if Abby had not pointed it out, I wouldn't have looked twice at the way they were mounted-- see for yourself!

On the financial front, I did decide to go with the local lender and forget about having another place beat the rate.  I felt a bit slimy about it, and the fact that the guy's local makes it better.  I do have to dredge up all of our paperwork over at the house tomorrow, to make sure we have everything we need to allow the refi to proceed, but that shouldn't be a huge issue.  I also was pretty psyched when I remembered I could transfer our construction insurance policy into regular homeowners' insurance; doing that should cut our rate in half.  I checked for cable providers, and unless we go for a dish-- which is pretty much a non-starter-- it looks like we're stuck with Comcast.  Yuck.  I also put out feelers for a security system.  For our DC house, with three doors and only five windows on the first floor, the free promotional systems worked just fine.  This time, with only two doors but crazy numbers of first-floor windows, I think we're gonna have to pay a bunch up front to make sure we get all the windows tied in.  Plus, that'll ensure our kids won't be able to sneak out of their windows undetected once they're teenagers... right?  Right?

Speaking of the kids, I finally got in touch with a legal mind who helped us out with our schooling dilemma, and it seems I was right: our kids can keep going to their school in DC, even after we move.  According to this firm, the fact that we'll be paying property and income taxes in DC allows us to choose our residency, just like snowbirds in New York choose to be Florida residents for tax purposes, even if they spend more time in Buffalo than in Sarasota.  Abby had been freaked out, because even though I was telling her that was the way I thought it would be, without having talked to a lawyer, she was worried about things like inviting people over for play dates or having birthday parties at home.  Now that we have someone in the know that told us we're cool, we can relax and renew our DC driver's licenses, register the kids for their same school next year, and bring out those mothballed plans for Abby's-- er-- Isaac's Halloween birthday party extravaganza down in the Glen.  But that's October, and this is still March, at least for one more week.

We've definitely got our work cut out for us this week, but now it's almost all squarely on us.  Once the plumbing is done, I'm going to consider the house unofficially livable.  Sure, we've got no doors on the bathrooms, and a giant hole under our back door-- although I just got an email from Home Depot about two hours ago saying the new door has been shipped-- but it's really now our job to make sure the accoutrements of living in a house are in order.  By the time we get back from the beach, we will be able to live in this house, and I'll be damned if something I did (or didn't do) is gonna hold me up from that!  (That said, we probably do have to get an official Certificate of Occupancy from the county, but that's Mark's job, not mine...)

3.5% Moved In

Originally, we were supposed to get our stuff delivered from storage today, so I took the day off.  Unfortunately, what ended up happening is that Zippy Shell had a technical issue.  The way Zippy Shell works is that they deliver you what is basically a cage in a trailer, or as they call it, a Shell.  You fill the cage, the trailer takes it back to their warehouse, where they keep it until they put it back in the trailer and deliver it to you.  From what I understand, someone is being belligerent about returning one of their trailers-- the same one they had planned to use when delivering our stuff, in our cage.  So instead of getting our stuff this morning, we will have to wait until Sunday.  That said, the owner of the franchise seemed genuinely sorry for the situation, and said he'd waive the delivery charge, so we'll deal...

Can you find Abby under all the stuff?

But the problem was that I had already taken the day off, and didn't want it to go to waste.  So, before we took the kids to school, Abby loaded the car full of stuff to take to the house.  It was frigid outside, so we made a pit stop for apple fritters and hot drinks, but we made it up to the house by 10 to deliver our first load of actual belongings into our home-to-be.  Really weird feeling... After a half-hour of procrastinating by giving a tour to Anique (sp?), the really nice woman who works in the main office, we headed back home to pack for round two.  This time, with no kids in the car, we were able to smash a lot more stuff in, including a giant tub of shoes on Abby's lap.

A window-box-full of stuff from Day One

After dropping the second load of stuff off, Abby dropped me off at the kids' school and went home to pack for a third round.  I got off pretty easy on this one-- she's so motivated to get out, that she's perfectly happy to do most of the packing work.  Not complaining of course, other than the fact that I had to stand out in what became the freezing cold playground for an hour (with good company, though) before she came back for us, again with a rather full car.  After a third round, we now have a decent dent taken out of the basement, and have made some rather substantial piles in various rooms throughout the house.

The rest of the weekend looks to be a LOT more fruitful, what with the Sunday Zippy Shell delivery and the appearance tomorrow morning of Abby's dad and brother; they're coming up from North Carolina to help us with moving our big stuff from the basement, like the couches and a giant bureau, with the help of my father-in-law's pick-up truck.  We're also hoping to use them to pick up some stuff from IKEA, like three new desks Abby's had her eye on.  (And if we get some meatballs in the process, it wouldn't be a shame.)  Once the weekend's over, we're hoping to have a bare minimum of belongings in the basement-- basically, the clothes we'll be using for the next week, our two mattresses, foodstuffs, and maybe some cushions from the already-moved couches.  Oh, and the TV; can't forget that.  Then?  It's only a matter of time, because on Monday the plumber is supposed to show up to finally hook up the toilets, the washing machine, the hot-water heater, and the fireplace.  On Monday night, I fully intend to go to the house and pee and wash clothes, maybe simultaneously.  Oh, and maybe dry them by the fire. In the meantime, I'll have to make due with the image of our newly-stacked laundry facilities, just waiting for their hookup.

Hook us up!  Please!

A bonus when it comes to the laundry room will be the fact that, due to erroneous ordering by our cabinet people, we're likely going to be left with several extra kitchen cabinets.  Abby says that, while talking to the installers, she found out that they generally just toss the misfit cabinets, or the installers take them home themselves.  Since to of ours are 90-inch-tall pantries, we're definitely interested in keeping them for ourselves, especially since one of them might fit perfectly next to the washer and dryer if we just push the two machines over a couple inches to the right.  It's not often we get silver linings like that, and I'll take it!

Another silver lining came to us when we found out Freedom Mortgage had officially severed our loan-- or whatever they call it when they cut their losses and run.  We had about $16,000 left in the credit line they had extended multiple times, and they just decided to put that money back into the mortgage and call it quits.  It actually works out for us, because we'd already paid that extra money (and more) to the contractors months ago, and had they written us a check, we just would have put it right back into the mortgage.  What this all means is that we are now officially good to refinance our mortgage, something I've been aching to do for a long time. Our current rate is 5.25%, which is not bad at all for what we had, which is called a 203(k) construction loan.  But now that the construction part is over, and interest rates are still historically low, I felt a need to take a refi and quick-- especially since our loan was FHA-backed, and they require PMI (mortgage insurance) on top of all payments, meaning we were paying an additional $200+ each month that had nothing to do with the interest or the balance, just for the right to have had the loan in the first place.  After 20 payments, I'm ready to shed that onus, that's for sure.

So I called Citibank, which is where we have our DC mortgage, and asked for rates; they told me 4.0%, which was great.  On a whim, I went to LendingTree.com and filled out a form on Wednesday night just for kicks.  On Thursday I faced a barrage of calls from lenders wanting to help us with refinancing, which was really refreshing, since when we bought the house we had to fight for exactly one obscure bank to make us an offer.  We ended up getting the best offer from a local broker with a bank I'd never heard of-- Round Point, which sounds like an oxymoron but I digress-- and locked in a 3.5% rate with no points and very low fees.  That means our payment will go down more than $800 a month once we refi-- hallelujah!  I called Citibank before we locked with Round Point and asked them to match the offer, since I really would rather have all my stuff at one bank, and they told me their rate desk required me to lock in my rate with the other lender first, then send Citibank the paperwork to consider.  I don't know how I feel about that, because it feels a bit like screwing the first guy buy having him do the work, then jumping ship for the too-big-to-fail chain.  I'll get back to you on my decision, but the gist of it all is that my  nearly $3000 monthly mortgage payment will soon be a thing of the past.  Phew!

"Round Point.  Because after all, we don't want you to poke your eye out."

Anyhow, that's all for today.  I'm staving off a cold, and have been popping generic DayQuils all day; about to NyQuil it and hope I won't drop before I physically hit the bed.  Tomorrow?  Progress.

And meatballs.

Argh

This is ridiculous.  

I hate that the last few posts have been about how we've been sitting around and waiting.  I've been putting off writing because nothing has happened, but then I started thinking today that I was going to write this blog to show what was really happening (or not happening, as the case may be), so I might as well fill you all in on the non-events.  (What a lead-in, folks!)

No, seriously, since I posted last time, I wrote at least four emails to our contractors, asking them little stuff like "hey, just wanted to make sure you remembered about moving the upstairs toilet over," or "hey, just wanted to make sure you remember our fridge has an ice maker," since I saw no plumbing holes cut near the fridge when I went over the weekend.  Nothing.  Not until Monday afternoon, when I wrote an email specifically saying that I was pretty freaking nervous, and that we were supposed to be moving in in a month, did I get a response.  Not a satisfying response, but at least one that made sense to me.  But WTF? Why can't you just write to me like you said you would and let me know what's going on, even if NOTHING is going on?  (Which brings me back to why I hadn't been writing... hmm...)

So what has been going on is this: the inspector came out to take a look at the electric and plumbing, and immediately informed them that the gas lines had to be finished before he could do his inspection.  They weren't, so that apparently started a mad scramble to finish them up.  And I'm guessing they're done, or almost done, because the gas inspector is coming next week-- or so I've been led to believe.  Once that's done, the original inspector can come back, and once he's okay with everything-- and seriously, he had better be-- then the drywall can go up and all the dominoes can fall.  Until then?  Nada.

Well, not nada exactly.  Abby went by the house this week and saw that they've started working on the Great Room ceiling, which is good, since that needs to be done before we move in, since it's probably not in our best interest to have our stuff and our kids living somewhere where old paint is being stripped.  I haven't seen how they're doing it yet-- I'm guessing with some sort of scaffolding-- but it heartens me to know something's actually happening.  Hopefully, I'll go by the house in a few days for a different inspection and inspect it myself.

That different inspection is one for our loan.  You know, the loan that needs to be closed out by November 18.  All of the work doesn't need to be done by then, but all of the work to make the house livable does, because it's all been planned out by HUD.  Got an email today from Patty, the administrator of the loan, forwarding concerns from HUD itself wondering why we haven't had an inspection lately.  Answer: nothing's been done that's worth inspecting!  Or rather, that's my answer.  Who knows the real answer?

Well, here's what actually has been done.  My bedroom closet has been built.  It intrudes slightly into the Great Room to the left of the window on the right as you walk in, so it's pretty much mirroring the bump-out from the bathroom.  Only problem is that they built the door to the closet opening into the Great Room.  Mind you, this is my bedroom closet.  With a door that opens into the Great Room.  See the issue?  They did that, supposedly, because we said we had wanted a pocket door as an entry door to our bedroom, but we had only said that because they asked "do you want a pocked door there?"  We assumed that, since they asked, they understood that we understood that their asking was based on the understanding that the BEDROOM CLOSET WOULD OPEN INTO THE BEDROOM.  Argh.

Honestly, I feel bad.  I feel bad because these are nice guys, and this is a huge project, and the nice part of me feels I shouldn't be so peeved.  But then I feel bad because this is my freaking house!  If I want a bedroom closet that opens into my bedroom, I shouldn't be made to feel bad about asking for it!  Similarly, the fact that I've been pestering them about moving the damn toilet pipe six inches to the left for MONTHS now makes me feel like a nag.  BUT IT'S MY HOUSE.  So I go in and notice they've laid the base to the shower.  Great.  Now the shower is small, because they based the dimensions on where the toilet pipe is.  THE TOILET PIPE THAT HASN'T BEEN MOVED.  Now I feel bad enough that I didn't bitch enough about the toilet pipe that I'm just going to drop the whole issue, because I don't want it to set us back any further in time.  No, we're not going to drop the fact that the downstairs toilet is also poorly placed, but this one I'm willing to take for the team.  But again, this was MY bathroom.  And I have always wanted a big shower with no tub.  And now that shower is going to be six inches smaller than I wanted it to be.  And I feel bad, because it's only six inches so I should just shut up about it.  And I feel annoyed because IT'S MY FREAKIN' SHOWER.  Argh.

The bathroom itself now has a lip coming out above the entry door, which I think I wrote about last time.  Don't think that's a big deal, although it looks weird now when there's no reason for the lip to be there.  But once it's finished, it'll be fine, and they're supposedly going to run the trim all the way around it to make it blend in.  But what if that doesn't happen?  What if I walk in and the bathroom bump-out is all painted nicely and the trim ends on either side?  Will I complain?  Will I feel bad about complaining?  Will I feel bad about not complaining?  Seriously, how many "arghs" can I put in one post?  Argh.

Oh, and some pipes are done in the kitchen, and there are working water pipes in the showers.

So Abby calls me one afternoon this week-- Wednesday?  Thursday?  They all run together...  Anyhow, she calls me after having met with the contractors and sounds defeated.  She tells me what's going on-- more things we're either losing or "will have to see" about.  No more instant water heaters, for instance.  Sure, they were more expensive, but they're really ecological, and when you're on vacation you don't use a lick of electricity because no water's going through.  So it looks like we're going to have a standard old water heater.  Not a complete loss, but one less thing that we wanted.  I guess a bunch of people took a look at the house and said there's no way we can use them.  I trust that-- I do.  I'm just annoyed because it's not the only issue.  Another: the damn toilet downstairs.  Some crap (ha!) about the angle of the pipe that feeds out of the toilet, and how if it would be moved, that angle might not be sharp enough.  Without the toilet where we want, not only will the toilet pretty much be facing straight out the back door, but we won't be able to use the bathroom how we wanted at all, because it won't be splittable into a bathroom and a getting-ready room.  "Good news" on the fireplace and the fridge, in that both are definitely still in the works.  But annoyed that the "good news" we have to report is that something we wanted to have done, and planned all along to have done, is still going to be done.  Argh.

All in all, it still looks like a good two weeks before drywall goes up.  Remember, we bought appliances on our vacation in London so that we could buy cabinets on our vacation in London so it could all be done in time to have everything done in time.  Now, the appliances are sitting in boxes in the Great Room, the cabinet installers are writing me weekly emails to check up on when they can come out and measure, and we've already paid the $13,000 bill for it all.  

Worst of all, I feel horrible because I'm screwing my friend Jamie, who's set to move into our house the moment we leave.  That was supposed to be October 1.  Now?  If we can't move by the end of the month, which is a definite, what does he do?  We're actually thinking of moving all of our stuff either into boxes or just straight into the basement and setting up shop there for a few weeks, letting Jamie move in upstairs so at least he can live normally for a while.  But we can't do that until at least October 26, for reasons I will NOT be going into in this edition, because that's a whole 'nother story...

Argh.

My bedroom closet.  Notice how the door, at left, opens NOT into the bedroom...

The overhang at the entry into the upstairs bathroom.
The beautiful wood behind it will be concealed by the air conditioning. :(

My shower.  Not nearly as big as I wanted it to be.
And the infamous poorly-sited toilet pipe at left.

Post-London Frustrations

This is how McKayla Maroney feels about our contractors right now.
You'd see us feeling the same, but someone had to take the picture.
(What: you think we came back from the Olympics without souvenirs?)

After spending a month abroad, Abby and I were understandably excited to come home and see all the progress that's been happening at the house.  Okay, so we only got one picture the entire month from the contractors-- and only after some heavy hinting that we wanted something-- but that's okay, because they must have been humming along so well that they had no time to take pictures, right?

Right?

All of the ductwork is done.  Excellent!  And the HVAC people even managed to hide the basement ducts so they don't run in front of the fireplace pediment, and they don't intrude on the storage space running along the wall.  Good stuff.  No actual system, but ductwork in is a good thing.

Okay, I see some electrical work has been done, too.  There are a few places where the outlets are in weird places, but that's kind of our fault because we didn't specify, for instance, where the beds would be.  Lola's bed will be a built-in, and there's an outlet right in there that'd be blocked.  One's behind Isaac's bed too, and behind where we're going to put Abby's grandpa's huge armoire.  Oh, and there's a sconce outlet behind the armoire too.  And in the guest room, there is wiring strung across an opening we had specifically noted we had wanted to be kept open to get into the under-stairs storage.  Okay, we can deal with that; it's easy to change the placement of a few outlets.

The recessed lights are in, but there are no lights in the kids' closets, and only one in the center of ours, even though it's nine feet wide.  Is that going to be enough light?  And speaking of closets, mine still hasn't materialized.

The toilet's roughed in.  And it's not in the right spot-- it's basically smack dab in front of the bathroom door, so when you look through the back door from the outside the only thing you see is the toilet.  It was supposed to be to one side, with the door on the other, so we could divide the room in two and both kids could use it at the same time when, for instance, they're getting ready in the morning, since they both go to the same school.  I guess we could have the door frame moved.  But the toilet?  How hard will it be for them to rough it in again?  Hmm...  At least the upstairs toilet has been moved to where it needs to be, right?  No-- the rough-in's still where it was a few months ago when I talked to the plumber and he said it wouldn't be a big deal to put a 45-degree pipe in to shift it over six inches.  (He also told me it wasn't a big deal because he'd just "charge Mark for it..." which means I'd pay, even though it's not where we said we had wanted it to be.)  That toilet has to move, because it's too close to the shower.  It's still there, though.

And the painting is mostly done on the exterior.  All of the dark green trim is done, so the black doesn't look as stark as it had.  Still don't love it, but it's better.  Wish it were still white.  Abby likes the black, and it looks nice from the inside, so that's fine, and honestly, there's no way what's black will ever be white again, because there's so much of it.  How many coats of white would you need to put on the black just to make it, I dunno, gray?  That's fine, I'll get used to it.  But there are still parts where there's streaking and someone needs to go over it with a finer brush or something.

And that's it.  The wall didn't go up between the kitchen and the bedroom, so the cabinet people are still twiddling their thumbs waiting to be able to do a final measure.  The appliances are all sitting in boxes in the living room.  There are no outlets on the outside of the house, and no spigots.  I don't know how to feel about this.  I had expected so much more to have been done in the month we were gone.  So many big strides were made in the month beforehand, and we put so much work into finalizing cabinetry and appliances while we were in London, that it's just a major let-down.  I honestly don't know how much should have been done, but it just doesn't feel right.  We've written to Mark & Rory to tell them the issues we have, and are trying to be upbeat about it.  We have had no reason not to trust them up to this point, and I don't see why we would stop trusting them at this point in the game.  It's just, well, I'm bummed about it all.   It's the middle of August, we wanted to be in in the middle of September, we shifted our expectations to the middle of October, and I'm nervous now.  We have to get this thing done, if only because we have a renter lined up for our current place, and he wants to move in in the second week of October.  That was going to be a possibility, or at least a really close overlap.  But now?  Maybe I'm just being a Debbie Downer, and everything's moving along just as planned.

We'll wait for Mark & Rory to get back to us and all will be better.  I hope.

Slow Going

I know I haven't posted anything in a while when I get pinged by my sister.  "New blog post!"  Okay, Courtney, but it's not going to be very exciting.

Slow going these couple weeks, doing a lot of waiting.  It's been pouring lately, and the ground's pretty saturated.  So the plumber hasn't been able to finish, because there's water everywhere.  And the wall behind the retaining wall needs to dry too, I think.  But supposedly both of those things will start up again tomorrow, when the plumbing inspector comes out and puts his stamp of approval on the connections that have gone in.  Yes, the plumbing is not 100% done, but we went yesterday and saw we are now officially hooked in to municipal water and sewer.  The plumber dug up under the sidewalk that faces the kids' bedroom windows-- getting awful close to the huge Yew tree in the process-- and around the corner into the house.  We got there just as the crew was pouring gravel on top of the pipes, so we did get to see the PVC before it was closed up.  And it's not just the water piping that's done-- Washington Gas came out in the last week or so and relocated that crazy pipe that was outside Isaac's window, sure to break the glass the first time he tried to open it.  That big metal thing's now a thing of the past, and we didn't even have to pay for it's removal and relocation.  Yay!  Montgomery County had supposedly been giving Mark the runaround on the permit for the retaining wall downstairs, so the excavation has been at a standstill.  However, yesterday I think he got it all sorted out, so hopefully, since there's a dry forecast for at least the next week, that project can get back on track too.

The water/sewer pipes snaking around the side of the house.

Tight fit for the water/sewer pipes between the sidewalk and the Yew tree.
Notice the big root they dug around; hopefully it won't cause any damage.
The blue pipe sticking up is where our responsibility ends and the
water company's responsibility begins.

We're having more than just a little feeling of crunch time lately, not necessarily because we're behind schedule but more because we have a crazy busy summer coming up.  Between going to Buffalo for a week for the Fourth of July to going to the Olympics for a month for work and going to Russia for a couple weeks to cover a summit, I have literally four free weekends at home the entire summer.  I've been trying to impart this to Mark & Rory, giving them our schedule and pleading with them to tell us beforehand what we need to have decided, and they're slowly giving us things to do.  We went the other night to Home Depot after work to pick out shower heads; not a good idea.  Shower heads are incredibly boring to choose, and taking the kids between school and dinner maybe wasn't the best choice.  We came home grumbling to ourselves, "we are not being overly strict to expect our kids to behave in Home Depot for an hour, are we?"  Lola actually got a time out in the shower-head aisle.  We came out of the experience with one "meh, that one's fine," and one "I guess--"  not the best results for a shopping trip!  Luckily we don't have to pick out bathroom faucets, because they come with the vanities we've already chosen and Abby loves.

Yesterday we stopped by to meet up with people who are going to give us an estimate on kitchen cabinets.  It's a place where they specialize in custom stuff with an ecological bent-- they sell sustainable cork and bamboo flooring, as well as kitchen counter-tops literally made out of paper, for instance-- and we've already chosen floor tile for the bathrooms from them, so they said they'd give us a discount on a custom kitchen.  Fine with me!  But when they came by, I think they confused me more than helping.  Of course, seeing a blank slate, they had all sorts of ideas... that were different than hours.  And when we told them our ideas, it was kinda Seinfeldesque: "Not that there's anything wrong with that..."  The two were an older Iranian guy, Mo, and a younger Serbian guy, Igor.  Mo was kind of the idea man, and Igor was the planner. Or something.  Either way, Mo mentioned moving the wall abutting the bedroom back a foot because our bathroom closet was too wide to be a normal closet and too narrow to be a walk-in.  He mentioned moving the pantry over to the window side of the entryway and blocking out that one window-- a non-starter with me, since the windows overlooking the glen are way too important to block, in my opinion.  He mentioned moving all of the cabinets over to one side of the room, getting rid of the counter-top that blocks the bottom pane of each window, and putting in seating and a quasi-breakfast nook in the corner.  I hate breakfast nooks.  And I am truly scared about the potential lack of storage in this house, even though he assured me there'd be the same amount of storage with his idea that there'd be in mine.  The one important thing he mentioned I hadn't thought of before: the exhaust vent from our stove.  I had thought it should go straight up and out of the roof, but he said it'd be better to make a 90-degree angle and have it exit through the side of the house, since apparently roof exhaust pipes deteriorate more quickly than wall ones.  Problem with his idea is it blocks out the top 6-9 inches of half of the upper kitchen cabinets.  My response was to suggest the pipe go through the wall before making the 90-degree turn, instead using the top 6-9 inches of our bedroom closet.  He was intrigued...

So, they took measurements and will get back to us.  We have someone tomorrow coming as well to give us an estimate; a man Abby met a week or so ago that she described to me as "an old man who is literally in love with granite."  Since we are not putting granite in our kitchen, I hope he's okay with our plans!  In the meantime, we're going to do some more independent study, and hopefully the slow moving will speed up.